Anubis Nights (3 page)

“Of course not,” she said and rose to her feet with some semblance of grace, but I noticed her neck muscles bunch as she exerted herself. “You want to tell me why you drew down on Sharon?”

Kelly didn’t know what had happened on the Royal Gorge Bridge, six months ago for her and more than five years ago for me. None of it would have happened had Sharon not betrayed me. I spun back to the entrance. Sharon walked toward the door and set my gun on the glass display counter by the register. She turned and gave me a lopsided grin. “I knew sixty-six months wasn’t enough time for you to get over it, but the day for which I saved you has finally arrived.”

A few years before the betrayal, I’d been shot and killed. Charon gave me a choice to stay dead or to live, but as in
The Godfather,
someday, and that day might never come, I’d be called upon to perform a service. While I’m not one to simply sign a blank check, the options were sign or stay dead.

“Get out,” I said, pointing toward the door.

Sharon shook her head. “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you shit, you lying little—”

“Careful, Jonathan. I’m forgiving to a point. I couldn’t help you that day. I wanted to be there for you, but when the time came, I knew it was something you had to do on your own. Obviously it all worked out. I understand you even have a steady girlfriend these days.”

“Am I missing something here?” Kelly asked. “What the hell is going on?”

Sharon smiled. “You didn’t tell her? Hmm, I didn’t see that one coming.”

“Nobody else needed to know,” I said.

Sharon shrugged. “Whatever. It’s time to pay the Ferryman.” She smiled, picked up my Glock, and pointed it at me. “Or if you prefer, I can kill you now and find someone else.”

Kelly stepped in front of me. “Don’t point a gun at my best friend.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Sharon said and pulled the trigger.

I tried to pull Kelly to the side, but there was no way I could possibly move fast enough. I caught her by the shoulders, and when she didn’t make any move on her own, I lowered her to the ground and knelt beside her. A Sekutar warrior can’t be killed with bullets, but Kelly hadn’t been herself lately, so I wasn’t sure the old rules applied. Normally she’d simply reach up and pluck the bullet from her skull, and the wound would heal in a few seconds.

But Kelly remained on the floor, eyes open but unresponsive. There wasn’t a mark on her, but I knew I hadn’t been fast enough to save her and Sharon wouldn’t have missed from such close range.

“What the hell?” I said. “Kelly?”

I stared at her but didn’t see an entrance wound from the bullet, nor did I find an exit wound. Kelly’s expression didn’t change.

“Kelly? This isn’t funny. Get up!” I looked up at Sharon.

She stood with the Glock aimed at the floor, dangling by her leg. “Is there a problem, Jonathan?” she asked.

“What did you do?”

“I shot at her.”

“She should be getting up already.” I checked her pulse at her throat. Nothing.

Sharon sighed. “Get up and talk to me, Jonathan.”

“You killed her!”

“Did I? Look in the air above you.”

I glanced up and, shadowed against the ceiling, I saw a bullet perched in the air. It wasn’t moving. I pushed myself to my feet, my blood pressure skyrocketing. I clenched my fists and stormed toward Sharon. I’m a mere mortal while she’s an immortal, but I was ready to punch her until the bones in my hands shattered.

She raised the gun, aiming at me again.

I stopped. It was instinct.

She let go of the gun and lowered her arm, but the gun hung suspended in the air.

“What the hell?”

“Take a closer look,” Sharon said.

I approached the gun. It didn’t move a millimeter. It wasn’t connected to anything; it simply remained motionless in the air as I walked around it, viewing it from every angle.

“Just like the bullet. What time is it?” Sharon asked, pointing to the clock.

Kelly had on the wall an old-fashioned clock with the minute and hour hands shaped like lighthouses. The time read 9:27, but then I noticed that the second hand wasn’t sweeping around the face. It sat pegged at forty-six seconds. It was battery operated, so it was certainly possible that the battery died, but I didn’t think so.

“What do you think of the traffic outside?”

I looked out the window at the traffic on Sheridan. It sat motionless. I noted, too, that it was unnaturally silent.

“Kelly will be fine. You moved her out of the path of the bullet. I just had to get your attention. Walk with me,” Sharon said.

She didn’t have this kind of power, so how did she accomplish this?

She turned and walked out the door, holding it open for me. She gave me a look like my mother used to give Merlin, our Siamese cat, who could never decide whether he wanted to go outside or stay inside. Merlin died when I was sixteen, having outlived my mother by two years.

“Any century now,” Sharon said.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said.

“Whatever. Come on.”

It was pointless to hold out any longer, so I followed her out the door.

Outside, nothing moved. The door remained open. Cars sat motionless in the street. A bird hovered in the sky as if it were simply a picture, and I’ll be damned if the little bastard hadn’t just unleashed a load of shit that hung in the air right above my Firebird. And I’d just washed the car. I flipped the bird to the bird.

An old man dressed in a vintage suit and tie stood on the sidewalk next to the dojo with one hand out, his eyes fixed on the gold pocket watch in his right hand. Sharon stopped beside him and turned to look at me. I still had my middle finger extended to the damn bird.

“What’s all this, then?” I asked, turning toward Sharon.

The old man slowly turned his head, but nobody else was moving. “Are you certain you wish to place everyone’s fate in the hands of an insolent human?” he asked. He spoke with a slight British accent. His looked me up and down as if he were taking my measure and judging me unworthy.

“This insolent human can hear you,” I said.

“He’s perfectly balanced,” Sharon said. “Light magic, dark magic, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect him. He is exactly what we need.”

“You are gambling with history, Charon.”

“And I need your approval to move forward. Everyone else is on board.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“He doesn’t approve,” I said. “Why did you betray me?”

“I didn’t betray you, Jonathan. Now be quiet. The grown-ups are talking.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” I asked. “Because I live in a world where people worship youth.”

“Oh, do shut up,” the old man said.

“Jolly good,” I said mimicking his accent. “But as an insolent human, shutting up would be bloody impossible.”

He ignored me and addressed Sharon. “I shall test him.”

“Please do,” Sharon said.

“No long division,” I said rubbing my chin. “And steer clear of fractions too.”

The old man approached me, and I met his gaze. Those people who always say things like he was an old soul never looked into this man’s eyes. He was ancient, and new, and . . . well, timeless. He looked as if he knew the answer to the riddle of the universe and could tell you what the question was and why the answer was forty-two. He reached out with his left hand and gripped my shoulder. His right hand still held that pocket watch. I glanced at the face of the watch, and it appeared to open up on the universe like those images the Hubble telescope sent back when the scientists pointed it at the darkest part of the sky only to see thousands more galaxies hurtling away from us, each filled with billions of stars. I had to pull my gaze away because I felt I could fall into that watch and be lost forever.

The old man’s lips tightened, and his eyes narrowed as he kept hold of my shoulder.

“If you’re trying to do the Vulcan nerve pinch, it’s a little to the left,” I said.

He ignored my comment, released me, and turned to Sharon. He gave her a single nod. “I am satisfied that he is perfectly balanced, but that means many other things beyond being immune to direct magic. It also means he can’t call forth any magic himself. Winslow can’t be defeated without magic.”

“Jonathan is resourceful. He’ll find a way. But you’re the only one who can make this happen.”

“So is time stopped only here, or is it stopped everywhere?” I asked.

“You aren’t helping,” Sharon said to me with a glare.

“Just trying to understand
some
thing.”

“Be quiet.”

“If you wanted me to be quiet, you should have frozen me in time too.”

The old man whirled around to face me. He shoved me against the wall with his left hand, and the guy was a lot stronger than I expected. He got up in my face. “We are currently outside of time, but still on this plane of existence. As I used magic to freeze everyone, it did not work on you. As you can tell, however, I can still do things to you physically.”

“So I’m outside of time?”

He rolled his eyes. “No. You are within time, though it is frozen around you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The point is that I can’t send you where you need to be, so while you’re balanced, it does us no good.” He pushed away from me.

“Not true,” Sharon said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“He isn’t affected by
direct
magic, but Kelly and his friends are.”

“I don’t follow,” he said, which was exactly what I was going to say.

“We create a link between his friends, send one after each of Winslow’s three aspects, and make sure Jonathan goes back with one of them. If we use a magically infused implant, it will take him back as long as he’s in direct contact with the living flesh of one of his friends.”

“Tuning the implant to his friends and them to one another?”

“In order.”

“That could work.”

“You guys are speaking English,” I said, “but I’ll be damned if I understand what you’re saying.”

Sharon stared at me a moment then nodded. “We need you to go back in time to stop three sorcerers who are one. You’ve managed time travel on your own. That’s why I didn’t go to help you that day on the bridge. You needed to do that. You needed to know you could change history.”

“The remote viewing and spiritual travel was a one-time thing. There are things in the ether, and they’ll rip me apart if I ever try anything like that again. And fuck you for not helping me. You got my friends killed.”

“You saved them.”

“No thanks to you.”

“And here we are again, back to the point. I can’t help you with this either. We need you to go back because the magic wielded by the three versions of Winslow won’t affect you. That means you are the only person who can stop them. Unfortunately the aspects fled into history, and if they succeed in altering things, none of what you’ve known will have ever existed.”

“Um,” I said. “I may not be the smartest guy on the block, but if they went back and changed things, why are we still here?”

The old man held up his pocket watch. “Because I am Chronos, and I stepped out of the time stream when they went back. I am still holding the gateway to the past open right here. I can keep it open for another—” He looked into the universe inside the watch. “—two hours, three minutes, and twenty-three seconds. We need to send someone back by then or all of this”—he gestured at the ground, the sky, the buildings—“will be gone. Erased from time as if it never existed.”

CHAPTER THREE

JONATHAN SHADE

I stood in front of the dojo staring at Chronos and let his words sink in. “So it won’t be an alternate timeline like in the
Back to the Future
movies?”

“Alas, no.”

“Damn. I like those movies.”

Sharon didn’t smile. She simply stared at me. “You and your friends need to go back and stop these sorcerers.”

“These sorcerers who are one? Why can’t you do it?” I asked. “Father Time here has the gate to history open; send back the Time Police or whatever, and stop those guys.”

“We have already lived through those times, so we can’t go.” She gestured at Chronos and herself. “We can’t physically enter the time stream at any point where we exist.”

“Tell him the rest,” Chronos said.

Sharon took a deep breath. “You have to succeed. You’ll have to defeat each of Winslow’s aspects in turn, and if you don’t . . . Well, if you don’t, I suspect none of us will exist.”

“Obviously I’m not going to be able to say no here because if I do, I won’t exist either. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“That’s right.”

“What about the creatures in the ether who want to kill me?”

“We’re using a physical portal, not the ether, for the initial trip. When you move forward, you’ll pass through the ether, but you’ll be moving so fast, no one will be able to touch you. Also, you went back in spiritual form rather than physical form before. That, too, will make a difference.”

“In that case you might want to kick-start time again. I’ll get everyone here, and you two can tell us what the job entails exactly.”

“As you say,” Chronos said and moved to snap his fingers.

“Wait!” I said.

He stepped back, surprised. “What?”

“Let me move my car first.”

“Excuse me?”

I pointed at the bird shit frozen in time above my hood. “Little bastard is having target practice, so I—”

Chronos rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers, and time moved forward.

My car was clean for a split second; then a splotch of nasty white goo splatted on the hood.

I frowned then turned and pointed at Chronos. “You’re a dick.”

His lips curled into a satisfied smile. He caught the door to the dojo before it closed.

From inside the building, I heard Kelly scream, “Jonathan?”

I went back inside, and Kelly hurried over. “What just happened? One moment I was staring down a gun in Sharon’s hand; the next, I was laying on the floor.”

“Everything’s all right,” I said. “Well, for the next few hours.”